AN:Ok, so it turns out that I'm a terrible person and there's really this and one more chapter. I got to writing everything out, and I realized that this was all way too long to make as one thing (and I'm also a terrible procrastinator, so I only had half the chapter done by Tuesday night AND I still needed to run it by my beta reader to make sure that it wasn't utter nonsense. Side note, Leona2016 has been beta-ing White, she's a champ.)
Anyways in the interest of not having 1 long low quality chapter, I'm splitting this up into 2 chapters.
I feel absolutely terrible about it though, and I'll be posting the last chapter tomorrow (Friday) rather than on Monday. Because I planned for everything to be done today, I don't think it's fair to add an extra 3 day wait for y'all.

.***.***.***.***.

The stolen Xi-class shuttle careened over the unmarred white surface of Crait, barreling towards a quickly closing crack in the face of a long forgotten rebel fortress.

Lori had been pushed back to the passenger compartment by the rebels. Ardis and her crib close by her side, and with Mitaka unconsciously crumbled on the floor. She forwent the long benches in the passenger compartment and instead sat slumped against the wall, just beside the broken man.

She put a hand on Mitaka's neck, checking for a pulse. She would be shocked if he hadn't broken the bone beneath his face. The bruise that began at one eye had spread through the rest of his features, it's deep purple only covered by patches of blackened and charred blood. For a long second, Lori didn't feel anything beneath her fingers.

Then she caught a barely there throb that assured her that Mitaka was still alive.

A series of shouts came from the cockpit. Lori fought to ignore them while she tried to stave off her own panic. Her own frantic concerns for her safety, for Ardis', for Armitage's fate that she didn't even dare to guess at. As her mind tumbling in dozens of directions she tried to focus on her strategy for getting out of this mess.

She had to find a way back to the Supremacy. But first she had to convince the rebels that she wasn't a threat. A ghost of a plan had already come to her; she would tell them that she had just escaped from a First Order prison. To explain Mitaka, she would claim that he had taken pity on her and helped her escape.

Hopefully that would convince them not to shoot her on sight.

The ship rocked and shuttered, interrupting Lori's encroaching worries. The already battered hovercrib beeped a warning. Lori didn't wait for it to shut down completely before scooping her shrieking infant from the failing machine.

No more than a second after she had wrapped her arms around did the compartment begin shaking violently. Lori held the back of Ardis' head, half curled over to protect herself and the child.

The wild shaking ended in a tremendous thud as the ship's engines died. Lori rolled to the side at the sudden jolt, knocked off balance and doing everything she could to shield the infant in her arms.

As she ground to a stop, the cockpit door hissed open and the loading ramp lowered. A sudden flurry of blaster fire soared scare inches above her. Abandoning her attempt to stand, Lori stopped on her side and pulled her knees up so that she completely surrounded Ardis. A few errant shouts cut through the cacophony of blasts. Lori was sure that a few were her own.

Then the blasts suddenly stopped, replaced by rushing footsteps. Lori hadn't moved, still desperately clinging to her sobbing infant when a hand shook at her shoulder.

Yelping and then immediately growing angry at how little control she had over herself, Lori struggle to turn her head and look up.

The sight that greeted her left her speechless and relieved.

Brixie Ergo, medic for the Red Moons mercenary group, was staring down at her.

"Lori!?" the young medic nearly shouted the other woman's name.

Dazed and confused, Lori simply fought to breathe against the sudden drain of adrenaline from her system.

"It's really you!" Brixie had no such pause, and eagerly leaned down so that she could help Lori to her feet, "I thought I'd never see you again. And you have Ardis too! This is a miracle, how did Finn and Rose find you?"

Lori had just gotten to her feet, but hadn't yet found her voice.

The medic in Brixie told her not to overload Lori quite so quickly, but the friend in her was hopelessly excited, "Never mind that. You're here! I have to go tell Dak, I nearly killed him when you were taken. And Anderphan. And Ivey. And Lex! He'll be excited too, trust me."

"Everyone's here?" Lori just barely managed to mutter the two words, knowing that she needed to play the part of a thankful escape, while barely able to manage her own thoughts.

Brixie heard a breathlessness to Lori's question, and she couldn't miss the fact that Lori swayed slightly as she stood. Cautiously looking around the room, Brixie's sight lingered on the presumably dead man that lay on the floor.

Ripping her gaze away from the dead man and the ruined ship compartment, Brixie thought that leaving the shuttle would be good for Lori, "Yeah, we're all here. Let's go find Dak. He'll be so happy to see you."

Lori heard a sadness lingering at the edge of Brixie's voice, but she didn't have the presence of mind to poke at it. Instead, she nodded her head and followed along.

Leaving the shuttle, they quickly came upon a tightly gathered group of people. Brixie hesitated before leaving Lori besides a control panel, but she eventually trotted off in search of Dak. Lori lingered at the back of the group, simply observing them.

Surprise coming in waves, Lori desperately wanted to. There couldn't have been more than four dozen people left in the base. All of them huddled together and hanging on the words of a few desperate leaders.

This was the end. The end of the Resistance that had nearly killed Armitage. The end of the Resistance that had been her reason for meeting the general in the first place.

Lori distantly wondered if any of them had known one of the dozens of spies she had ferreted out. Then she wondered how many Resistance agents there had been in the first place, if this was all that was left.

A worried ripple rolled across the crowed, Lori wasn't sure why.

She was losing her touch. Caught off guard, she had missed whatever their plan was. On any other day she would have been more than ready to use their actions to her advantage, but today she was just trying to cling to sanity.

"Come on." Finn said to them, "we have allies. People believe in Leia. They'll get our message. They'll come! But we have to buy time. We gotta take out that cannon."

What? Lori only dimly felt that questioning word drift through the back of her mind. Cannon?

.***.***.***.***.

General Hux stood in an upsilon shuttle and watched with a solemn expression as the Supremacy and it's scattered remains shrank from view. Emergency craft were already swarming around the doomed wing. Reports of the conditions inside had been scarce to nonexistent, but he had overheard the occasional garbled transmission of a desperate survivor, not long for this life and choked to near silence by smoke and thin air.

He tried to put his most obvious fears away as the upsilon shuttle approached Crait, but they lingered at the edge of his mind.

Lori is a survivor. She escaped Bastion single handedly, and here she has all the help of the First Order at her disposal.

A plume of quickly fading flame jutted from a fresh rupture in the hull. The general tried not to think of it's exact location. Tried not to wonder if it came from city block eighteen, or the FOSB headquarters.

Hux's view of the flaming wreckage faded as the shuttle dipped below the first thin strands of Crait's atmosphere.

They're fine. They must be.

The shuttle rocked as it grew closer to the ground.

Beside the command shuttle were a series of transports and light freighters. Within them were no less than ten AT-MG6s, two AT-ATs, two AT-HHs, and a series of AT-STs that the general hadn't bothered counting.

Hux glanced to a communications panel, ignoring the seething and self-proclaimed supreme leader. A squadron of TIEs were close behind the main force, escorting a siege cannon that Kylo Ren had ordered be stripped from one of the more heavily wounded dreadnaughts. To Hus's ire, the rebel base had a working shield generator. Built with the empire in mind, the shield was enough to give his wounded fleet a pause, but a point blank blast from inside the shields range would crack the base wide open. Of course, Hux was of the mind that they should simply wait for the Resistance's shield to run out of power.

Kylo Ren snarled a question out to the pilot.

Or we could impulsively charge ahead. Hux looked past the viewport, turning his gaze to the wide expanse of salt that stood between his troops and a mountain range. What a pathetic distraction. We'd be better served simply waiting for the shield to lower and then turning the mountain range to slag. My time is better spent searching for Lori and Ardis besides.

The upsilon shuttle began to slow it's approach, carefully keeping far enough back from the rebel base's heavy blast door to avoid the shrapnel that might come from it's destruction. Hux lazily eyed the field, three thin trench lines created red gashes across the pristine white field. Scarcely a dozen artillery emplacements dotted the area. They had little to no strategic thought behind their placements, obvious signs that the base had been built by the desperate, for the desperate.

The general rolled his eyes. The death of the rebellion should have happened an hour ago, but now he was here to watch a man-child scream at a few pathetic stragglers. Hux took a half step back, searching a rear control panel for updates on the Supremacy's condition.

When he found nothing but grim news, he tried to ignore the sickly churning of his guts with a glance back out the viewport.

A sudden jolt of motion came from the far off blast door. Surface ships with a design so iconic and so long surpassed by better designs, that Hux instantly recognized them as V-4X-D ski speeders.

Hux didn't even have to look at a data readout as the ships stumbled and rushed forward. Their numbers were so few, he could count them by the thin streaks of red that they in the salt.

If Hux were capable of pity, it would have infected his words. Instead, the general spoke with a thinly veiled disdain for both his commander and his enemy, "Thirteen incoming light craft. Shall we hold until we clear them?"

"No." Ren answered in a deranged whisper, "The Resistance is in that mine. Push through."

Hux bit his tongue as the command shuttle began to buzz with commotion. He would play along only so that this would end quickly. Only to avoid a delay in his return to the Supremacy.

.***.***.***.***.

The crowd began swarming through the base, giving Lori a wide berth as they did.

Brixie came back from the group of people, not having found Dak. It seemed like something had changed in the short time that she was away, and Brixie looked to her battered friend.

First degree burns covered most of Lori's exposed skin and the charred sections of her stolen uniform didn't bode well. Patches on Lori's face were burnt to the second degree. Brixie could only see the edge of Lori's hand for how closely she clung to Ardis and her blanket, but she was sure that she saw the edge of a third degree burn on Lori's palm.

Moving slightly and slowly so as not to surprise Lori, Brixie brought her hand to gently lay against Lori's back. When it did, Brixie found that Lori was shaking slightly. Suspicions growing, Brixie looked to Lori's eyes. They were dilated, and despite the frantic scene before them, they didn't seem to focus on anything.

"Hey, Lori." Brixie spoke with a softened voice, "Let's go sit down."

A creeping panic sat at the edge of Brixie's thoughts. She hadn't had the chance to check Lori's pulse or temperature, but she had seen a few hints of shock on her friend.

"Lori?" Brixie pressed more firmly again Lori's shoulders and brought her other hand to Lori's front. More than ready to slow her fall if the other woman suddenly collapsed.

The sensation of a hand against her back took Lori away from thoughts that she hadn't even begun to have.

The crowd had suddenly dispersed. For a moment Lori thought she was alone before finding Brixie still standing at her side.

"I couldn't find Dak. Let's go sit down." The medic repeated.

Lori heard the cautious edge to Brixie's voice. Slowly realizing that she was the cause for concern, Lori took as sure of a step as she could manage. A few wisps of panic that she didn't know the reason for lingered around her. Crunching down the vulnerability with a thick twinge of resentment, Lori wordlessly made for a stool sitting by an abandoned radar terminal.

On the way there Lori looked down at Ardis. Exhausted from the ordeal and finally in a room that wasn't on fire or violently shaking about, the infant had slipped into a deep sleep.

The baby was as much of a calming anchor as Lori could hope for. Unsure of when she had lost her voice, Lori coughed slightly to shake a few words loose.

Her throat ached, and Lori realized that it was probably caked with soot as she tried to speak, "I-I'm fine. I'm fine!"

Brixie didn't believe her for a second. Rather than telling Lori as much, Brixie pulled a half filled water bottle from her belt, "Here. You'll feel better with some water in your system."

Lori shifted her sleeping daughter in an attempt to free a hand.

"I can hold her," Brixie offered.

"No!"

Brixie tried not to recoil at the forcefulness of the single word.

Dropping the sudden tenseness in her shoulders, Lori tried forcing herself into a calm.

"No," she repeated, "Ardis is staying with me."

Lori felt her pulse flutter as a hot flash bloomed over her skin. The heat quickly faded, and a sudden cold enveloped Lori. Sure that she was acting strangely, Lori fought with herself for some semblance of control.

The sympathetic look in Brixie's eyes only made Lori more desperate and angry.

Clinging to something -anything- that didn't feel like it was controlled by pure chaos, Lori looked for comfort in a lie of her own making.

"They took her, Brixie." The words tumbled from Lori's lips. Uncontrolled and sounding all the more real for her panic, "They took her away, and I just got her back. Ardis isn't leaving my side again."

Brixie nodded in understanding. Holding the water bottle and waiting for Lori to move at her own pace, she said, "It's okay. You're safe here. Help is on the way."

Lori let her eyes dart to the closed blast door. Help was on it's way.

The medic took her own meaning from Lori's darting eyes, "Don't worry about them. They won't get you again, I swear."

The promise on Brixie's words was heavy, and Lori would have appreciated it in any other circumstance.

Instead she found her uncontrolled thoughts reaching in an untold number of directions. Through all of them was the persistent fear for her and her daughter's fate, but also a burning question of what had happened to Armitage.

He must have been on the bridge during the blast.

Did the Supremacy even still have a bridge?

"What?" Brixie leaned closer to Lori, water still in hand.

Lori hadn't even realized that she had spoken aloud.

Get it together! She made sure to keep her thoughts in her head this time.

"Did we take out the main ship? Did we get the bridge?" Lori made sure to speak as if she was on the rebel's side. The words tasted bitter.

"No," a dark look traced over Brixie's features before being pushed away.

A quick flurry of movement came from the front of the base. Brixie turned to watch as a score of her friends scooped up their rifles and made for the narrow halls that would take them to the trenches. She watched a dozen of her friends slide into decrepit ski-speeders.

She watched her friends, and she was sure that she wouldn't see them again.

Turning back to Lori with a tear of her own sitting at the edge of her eyes, Brixie said, "No. We didn't get the Supremacy's bridge. But we'll get them eventually. We have to."

Lori slumped in relief. Brixie thought she was watching her friend deflate.

Working off of the tiny sliver of good news, Lori dug deeper into the reality she was making for herself, "Well, at least y'all knocked all the security out. If it weren't for y'all and that lieutenant, I'd still be trapped."

Lori had meant to emphasize the supposed fact that she had been an unwilling captor. What she hadn't intended was Brixie giving a solemn nod and a comment about Mitaka.

"It's a shame he didn't make it. A defector straight from the Supremacy would have been helpful."

"Would have?" a sudden sinking sensation threatened to throw Lori off of the sense of sanity she had finally found, "He was alive when we landed."

"He was alive?" the comment caught Brixie perfectly off guard. She had seen the man's ruined face, and hadn't seen that he was breathing. The sight had left her to assume that a fractured skull had killed the man. The thought of leaving someone so terribly injured behind spurred Brixie into action, "I'll be right back."

She had scarcely said her final word before setting the water down and trotting back to the stolen shuttle.

Left to watch the few people that remained in the base, Lori was able to focus on nothing beyond her own breathing. She had as much confirmation as she could hope for that Armitage was alive. The only thing that they could do now was wait for the First Order to come to their rescue.

Lori looked at the heavy blast door, but thought of the decrepit fighters and puny rifles.

Help was on its way, and it was only a matter of time before it arrived.